Facebook Will Soon Let Users Wipe Their Web History And Stop Ad Tracking

One of the creepy features of Facebook is how it seems to be able to display ads based on things you’ve browsed for in the past. As Facebook has acknowledged, this is due to data sharing between retail websites and Facebook, where the former can share information with Facebook which would allow them to display similar and relevant ads.

However, the good news is that Facebook will soon be introducing a new feature to its platform in which it would allow users to wipe their web history and disable tracking, meaning that while ads will still show up on Facebook, they might be less relevant than before.

According to Facebook’s post, “If you clear your off-Facebook activity, we’ll remove your identifying information from the data that apps and websites choose to send us. We won’t know which websites you visited or what you did there, and we won’t use any of the data you disconnect to target ads to you on Facebook, Instagram or Messenger. We expect this could have some impact on our business, but we believe giving people control over their data is more important.”

However, it should be noted that this feature needs to be opt-in, meaning that by default it has been turned off and that Facebook will still continue to track your web history and display relevant ads. This also means that for users who are unfamiliar, they will not necessarily know that the feature exists. Also for now, the feature is currently being rolled out to Ireland, South Korea, and Spain, but it is expected to eventually expand to more markets.

Tyler Lee
Categories: General
Tags: Facebook, Privacy